Many participants here are no doubt already familiar with the Media History Digital Library and its search platform Lantern, which scans and offers for public use over 800,000 (as of this writing) pages of media-related publications from the early years of film and mass media, from trade publications to fan magazines. It is the work of David Pierce, who has been a participant at NitrateVille, and Eric Hoyt, together with many collectors who have scanned and offered them the publications they have in their collections. The vast opportunities for new forms of research which the availability of this material creates are well discussed in this thread here and in this blog post by John McElwee, to name two.

NitrateVille is pleased to announce a new partnership with this project: we are creating a dedicated forum which will serve as the discussion platform for issues related to the operation and use of the Media History Digital Library. This relieves the MHDL of having to manage a discussion forum itself, and allows it to focus its (volunteer) energies on its chief mission of growing its library, while for NitrateVille, it creates an entry point for independent researchers and enthusiasts to discover our forum and join in discussion here.

There are just a couple of rules I would like to make people aware of:

1. For all who participate in discussion here: the Media History Digital Library forum is specifically for issues related to using the MHDL and its search platform Lantern for research. When a discussion veers from "How do I find what German distributors thought about Clara Bow?" to "That Clara Bow, she's one hot mama" it should be broken off (with a link if you want) and taken to the appropriate general NitrateVille forum, i.e., Talking About Silents, Talking About Talkies, Image Gallery, etc. The moderators will, when they deem it necessary, split threads which have traveled from that focus on the MHDL, with a link to where discussion continues.

2. NitrateVille aims to be a friendly, moderated forum. Participants are strongly encouraged to maintain the existing civil tone, and moderation, lightly but firmly practiced, will be employed as necessary. More about that here. Also please note that as a public forum, we discourage discussion that features blatant copyright violation in public; more about that here and here.

If you are having trouble registering for NitrateVille, please email me at mikegebert at gmail dot com.

“Sentimentality is when it doesn't come off—when it does, you get a true expression of life's sorrows.” —Alain-Fournier